John Quincy Adams, President and Congressman

American Minute with Bill Federer

On FEBRUARY 21, 1848, John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke at his desk in the House chamber, shortly after making an impassioned speech against the Democrat plan of extending slavery to the Western territories won in the Mexican-American War.

He died 2 days later without regaining consciousness.

A bronze marker on the floor indicates where Adams's desk once stood, known at the "whispering spot" in Statuary Hall.

John Quincy Adams was the only President to serve as a Congressman after having been President.

Nicknamed Old Man Eloquent for speaking out against slavery, he offered a plan for its elimination.

In 1841, John Qunicy Adams defended before the Supreme Court 53 Africans who had mutinied aboard the slave ship Amistad, gaining them their freedom.

As African slaves were purchased at Muslim slave markets, John Quincy Adams wrote in his "Essay on Turks" (1829): "The natural hatred of the Mussulmen towards the infidels is in just accordance with the precepts of the Koran...
The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies..."

John Quincy Adams continued: "In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab...spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth...
He declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as a part of his religion...
The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust, to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature."

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A Letter to the People of Egypt from an American Muslim

The following op-ed by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser appears online today at the Blaze and can be found at this link.

Understanding Egypt

Posted by Scott Baker

Editor's note: The Blaze is featuring some guest posts to help our readers gain a deeper understanding of the situation in Egypt. M. Zuhdi Jasser is the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) based in Phoenix, Arizona. He can be reached at info@aifdemocracy.org.

From: M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, President, AIFD

To the People of Egypt:

I cannot even pretend to be able to fully relate to the courage and spirit your people have shown the world these past few weeks. As an American physician, a devout Muslim, and president of an organization founded on the concept of bringing the principles of liberty to Muslims, I applaud your fearless pursuit of liberty for the Egyptian people. I am hopeful that your courage will reach the doorsteps of all oppressed Arab nations.

I have watched with amazement and great respect what you have been able to accomplish. Without using violence, relying on only your courage, self-determination and unwillingness to compromise your principles, you forced a long-term autocrat to cede power. That is the power that freedom can bring, and I hope you will clench that feeling of victory from liberty close to your chest as you struggle through to the next path for Egypt. The actions you take in the next few months will define the destiny for your people and I respectfully offer a few ideas that I hope you'll find valuable to consider.

I am a first generation American-Muslim, Arab, and Syrian. My parents were forced to flee to America from the same terminal vortex of totalitarian Arab fascist rule that you are hopefully stepping out from under today. I so wish my father and grandfather were alive, to see what you have been able to accomplish so far. You've shown that the free will of the Arab people has not been interminably paralyzed by the fear of these entrenched despots and the henchmen of their police states.

In 1966, by becoming American, my parents got back their inalienable rights to their Creator that their motherland of Syria had long denied them. I remember my grandfather telling me prior to his death in 1976 how Arab societies were dying the slow deaths of their spirit. Later I would hear of some towns like Hama in Syria in 1981 actually being wiped out with over 30,000 people executed in a matter of a few days, while the world paid little attention.

Now, in this new age of 24/7 cable news coverage and the growing uncontrollable global village of social Internet networks and communication, such acts of genocide are no longer possible without an immediate global backlash. Had your demonstrations this month occurred in the 70's or 80's, they would have been met with mass murder and imprisonment, with little reaction from the West.

But as we saw last summer, with Iran's Green Revolution, when the West turned its gaze away after only a few weeks, the thuggish theocrats in charge began using savage violence against their own people, in order to smother the organic popular uprising.

Please know that there are many of us in the United States who have not forgotten our roots, and who know that the only way to defeat the two evils of Arab fascism and radical Islam in our motherlands is through the moral advocacy of another means of living - in liberty.

I hope your actions get us to "reboot" the lens though which America sees Middle Eastern countries. For all the good America has done and tried to do around the world, our foreign policy towards Egypt has not always been consistent with the advocacy of the liberty that our founding documents articulate. Too often, we have allowed our stance on Egypt to be governed by momentary expediency, and choosing between the lesser of two evils. I can only hope that your courage will re-inspire our political leaders to take a principled approach to advocating on behalf of your freedom, vigorously and without apology.

But while the road ahead is wide open for you, I can only pray that you will not succumb to the pressure of those who want you to vote yourselves into a tyranny of the masses, to replace the autocratic tyranny from which you just liberated yourselves. For as Thomas Jefferson, one of America's greatest Founding Fathers noted:

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for. The concentrating of [legislative, executive, judiciary] power in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one."

While your courage and actions have inspired many of us here in America, I must tell you that many of us also fear that without a movement that embraces and clearly articulates the virtue of individual liberty, of the right of the individual to think and decide for himself and herself, Egypt may devolve into instability, chaos, or Islamism.

You have brought back personal accountability to the condition of Arabs in the Middle East. You have taken the first steps to walk Arabs out of the morass of conspiracy theories that blame everything in our condition on everyone else with little to no personal accountability. To see your demonstrations, free of anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western propaganda, I am left with great hope that a pragmatic, responsible movement of advocates for freedom and self-repair can happen not only in Egypt but in every Middle Eastern nation.

You now have our attention and renewed respect for self-determination. What next? The transition from protests to pluralistic democracy is a great chasm. Do not be distracted by trying to settle sectarian or tribal disputes that have long festered in the oppressive environment from which you are arising.

I have never known oppression like you have lived, but my family has. I have known freedom and liberty and understand the underpinnings of a society necessary for that. Mubarak and his henchmen have prevented the growth of any institutions that would have fostered the ideas of liberty you now need while he also fueled the theocratic ideas of political Islam and its slippery slope of radicalization in order to keep your masses at bay.

In the coming weeks and months I pray that the military in control now in Egypt will actually step aside and allow a new organic Egypt to emerge. If they do not and all your efforts do is bring forth a new dictator from the old henchmen, you must return to the streets. I also hope that before elections you will endorse and move forward a set of universal principles of a new Egypt, codified in a new constitution that respects all equally before the law- a law based not in one faith but rather based in reason. I hope you embrace Western principles of liberty as humanitarian and not only Western.

I am under no illusions that this will happen overnight. Iraq is a testimony to how drawn out and complicated that process can be. You may take steps backward before you go forward.

While your movement does not appear to be Islamist, there is also no denying the fact that some fear over a future Islamist hijacking of your movement is valid. Islamists are well versed in using democracy and elections as a patient vehicle toward the Islamic state and the implementation of sharia law.

The freedom you seek will not come from a new-Mubarak like despot and it will not come from sharia law. Countering Islamists never works by pushing them underground, but that does not mean they deserve a "seat at the table." They may eschew violence in order to feign moderation but their ideology is at its core incompatible with a free Egypt or a secure Middle East. They must be confronted with this openly in a true battle of ideas towards Islamic reform the only way to diffuse their movement. I believe that a secular constitution founded in the inalienable equal rights of every individual, blind to faith and yet under God, is the only path that will fulfill the destiny you long for Egypt.

Recent polling shows a deep penetration of various draconian ideas of shariah law into the Egyptian mindset. We are thus deeply concerned how a people for whom over 80 percent believe in the murder of apostates can give rise to a modern democracy.

As your new leaders arise organically, I hope they marginalize Islamists and their ideas and form new reformist institutions to counter global founts of Islamist theocracy like Al-Azhar University in Cairo. A secular leadership in Egypt's new republic will not have staying power to succeed against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and their insidious ideologies without genuine scholarly Muslim reform toward modernity and the separation of mosque and state.

As I sit in the comfort of my Arizona home in the warmth of this lap of freedom, I dare not make a suggestion that I know what direction you will take. But I do know that anything short of genuine pluralism and liberty in Egypt will remain an unstable society in conflict with the free world.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin: "A democracy is two wolves and a small lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."

Do not let the illusion of the Islamic state anesthetize your drive toward modernity as the only pathway to God. Remember that the Islamic State is still run by despotic theocrats and not God. The Islamic state by definition is doomed to failure. As an American Muslim I have come to love liberty and eschew the Islamic state. I know Egyptians can do the same. The world is watching.

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M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD is the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a former US Navy Lieutenant Commander and can be reached at info@aifdemocracy.org

Pearl Harbor

USS Arizona burning in Pearl Harbor

"December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. ... Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory. ... With confidence in our armed forces -- with the unbounded determination of our people -- we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God." --Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat far removed from today's crop of defeatists

On that fateful "Day of Infamy," 353 Japanese planes attacked a military target at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing 2,390 American servicemen and civilians and wounding 1,282. The attack sank or damaged eight battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers and one minelayer and destroyed 188 aircraft. It took four years and the full military-industrial capability of the United States to defeat Japan.

It is with honor and respect for those who died or suffered terrible injuries that Sunday morning that we should never again fall into the slumber that allowed such a tragedy as Pearl Harbor -- or the attack on Sept. 11, 2001 -- again.

*****

(Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

Voters Speak: No To Soak-The-Rich Schemes

By Michelle Malkin

Do Americans share President Obama’s desire to impose redistributive social justice on the well off? In liberal Washington State, of all places, voters gave a definitive answer this Tuesday: No! The resounding rejection of a punitive “Robin Hood” initiative shows that it’s not just red-state Republicans who oppose extreme tax hikes on the nation’s wealth generators.

As Capitol Hill resumes debate on whether to extend the so-called “Bush tax cuts,” the White House should pay special heed to the fate of little-noticed Initiative 1098. Its defeat by a whopping 65-35 margin doesn’t bode well for Team Obama’s class warriors still clinging bitterly to their soak-the-rich schemes. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insisted this summer that saddling higher earners with higher taxes was “the responsible thing to do.” Given the chance to weigh in at the ballot box, a diverse majority of voters in the other Washington determined otherwise.

The Evergreen State is just one of seven states in the nation without a personal income tax. The ballot measure, which would have enacted a state income tax on the wealthiest 1 percent of Washington residents to raise $2 billion for bankrupt public schools, was sponsored by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his left-wing corporate lawyer father. Top donors? The Service Employees International Union, whose state and national chapters threw in a combined $2.5 million of its members’ hard-earned dues money, and the National Education Association, which pitched in nearly $760,000.

Hiding behind kiddie human shields, the I-1098 campaign assailed the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” and plastered their campaign literature with sad-faced students and toddlers. Big Labor has been pushing a punish-the-wealthy movement for months. According to Forbes magazine, “six of the 10 states with the highest income tax rates — Oregon, California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina — raised their levies on high earners, at least temporarily” last year.

But business owners large and small, representing companies from Bartell Drugs to Amazon.com, successfully fought back against the job-killing measure in Washington State. Disavowing the Gateses, Microsoft honcho Steve Ballmer also joined the opposition. The software company’s senior executives expressed grave concern “about the impact I-1098 will have on the state’s ability to attract top tech talent in the future.” Liberal newspaper editorial boards including the Seattle Times and Tacoma News Tribune added their objections, citing I-1098′s reckless targeting of wealth-creation in the middle of a recession and the inevitable extension and increase of income taxes to the middle class. And economists at the independent, nonpartisan Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University found that I-1098′s tax burdens would lengthen and deepen the current economic downturn by destroying private sector jobs, reducing residents’ disposable income and prolonging the state’s high unemployment rate.

Amber Gunn of the free-market Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash., gave the bottom line on I-1098′s unreality-based advocates: “Initiative proponents like to operate in a Keynesian world where higher tax rates and their effects on human behavior and competitiveness among states don’t matter. But those effects are present in the real world and must be accounted for.”

I-1098′s promoters tried to disguise their wealth-suppression vehicle as tax “relief” by tossing in a few stray targeted cuts. But they were called out by a judge and slapped with a court order to make the income tax burden explicit in the ballot title.

If only the taxmen in Washington, D.C., were required to do the same. Obama’s budget proposal is a soak-the-rich scheme adorned with a few business tax breaks that would — for starters — impose nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes on couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000. Some “relief.”

On Thursday afternoon, still smarting from the nationwide “shellacking” the Democrats received on Election Day, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs signaled that Obama would be willing to “entertain” temporary — not permanent — tax relief for the nation’s highest earners. But a time-limited reprieve in prolonged economic hard times is expedient politics and bad policy. Tax relief should be all or none. The new House majority should force the Democrats to choose.

Republicans must stop allowing the White House to demonize America’s entrepreneurs and producers. By continuing to refer to them as beneficiaries of the “Bush tax cuts” instead of as the besieged victims of Obama tax increases, the GOP cedes the moral high ground. It’s time to make the White House own its noxious war on wealth.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2009).

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

Muslim Brotherhood Declares War on U.S.

Email from Act for America

For years the Muslim Brotherhood has had a plan for “civilization jihad” against the West. The goal,
stated in its strategic memorandum: “destroying the Western civilization from within.”

Brigitte Gabriel devoted an entire chapter to this in her best-selling book, They Must Be Stopped. (If you already have a copy, we encourage you to purchase another one and donate it to your local library.)

As the WorldNetDaily story below reveals (highlights added), the Muslim Brotherhood is openly moving to the next stage of jihad—violent jihad. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and numerous government agencies continue their failed policy of “outreach” to leaders and organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. They hope against hope this will “marginalize” the “extremists.”

As Dr. Phil would say, “how’s that working out for you?”

---

HOMELAND INSECURITY
Muslim Brotherhood ‘declares war’ on U.S.

Analyst compares leader’s sermon to bin Laden’s pre-9/11 warning

---

By Art Moore
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=214245

5 years before the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaida declared war on America, the
West, Christians and Jews – and virtually no one noticed.

Now, a longtime observer of Islam is warning that a "war declaration" of potentially much greater significance has been made.

The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi, who was elected only months ago, has "endorsed anti-American Jihad and pretty much every element in the al-Qaida ideology book," writes Barry Rubin, author and director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal.

The Brotherhood – the dominant Islamic organization in the West that has spawned most of the major Muslim terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, along with the largest "mainstream" organizations – is giving the signal that it is "ready to move from the era of propaganda and base-building to one of revolutionary action," says Rubin. ...
Read the rest at WND

Read more critical security articles at ACT! for America

A Diverse Opinion About Diversity

By Burt Prelutsky

Recently, I heard from a guy who claimed that squirrel tasted just like chicken. Some days, I swear, I get the idea that everything's supposed to taste like chicken. But it brought home the fact that what we eat, as well as what we think, is often more a matter of geography than of anything else. Frankly, I wouldn't care if it tasted like chocolate ice cream, I've never had squirrel on my plate and I aim to keep it that way. As with frogs and snakes, there are some things I regard as food and some things I'd prefer not to think about at all. And that's how I want to keep it.

So it will probably come as no surprise that I am not a champion of diversity even though I am aware that the word, itself, has taken on sacred qualities in certain quarters, along with such words as liberal, progressive and Obama. Leftists mainly enjoy using the word as a club with which to bash conservatives over the head. Suggest that you believe that America's traditional values and culture trump those of other countries, and you can expect to get whacked.

For a couple of hundred years, foreigners have been flocking to the shores of this most welcoming of nations. They would bring along their art and music along with their cuisine, but they adapted their ways in order that their children and their children's children would acclimate and be full-fledged Americans. There was a reason, after all, that America was nicknamed the Great Melting Pot.

But somewhere along the way, there was a sea change. Now we have that oddest of strange creatures known as the dual citizen and we have millions of people living here who apparently have no particular loyalty to this country and are being encouraged to retain their own language and their old ways. "Press one for Spanish, two for English" has become commonplace. Teenagers who have never even set foot in Mexico, Salvador and Guatemala, demonstrate in our streets while carrying foreign flags, and we're all supposed to respect them or be labeled as bigots and xenophobes.

American citizens who are being taxed to death to support illegal aliens are called racists if they object to footing the bill for health care and education for millions of freeloading ingrates who insist they're only reclaiming land that is rightfully theirs.

On top of all that, our kids are being brainwashed in their schools into accepting that the only truly evil society on the face of the earth isn't North Korea, Iran, China or Syria, but their own. They're taught to accept that Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, aren't gangs of butchers and terrorists, but simply freedom fighters. They are carefully taught that Christian and Jewish symbols and traditions are oppressive, but that they mustn't be judgmental when it comes to burkas, beheadings and female mutilation.

By their lights, tolerance is the greatest of all virtues, but only so long as it's not tolerance of anything American.

I accept that our ways wouldn't suit everyone in the world. In some places, after all, cock fights and bullfights are the norm, just as the execution of homosexuals in Iran, the sublimation of women in Saudi Arabia and the eating of dogs in parts of Southeast Asia are apparently part of their disgusting cultures. So while I may not approve of these loathsome activities, I figure they can do what they like, so long as they stay where they are. In fact, staying where they are strikes me as being one hell of an idea.

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post.US